Hydrogen-assisted Cracking Paths in Oriented Pearlitic Microstructures: Resembling Donatello Wooden Sculpture Texture (DWST) & Mantegna’s Dead Christ Perspective (MDCP)

Progressive cold drawing in eutectoid steel produces a preferential orientation of pearlitic colonies and ferrite/cementite lamellae, thus inducing strength anisotropy in the steel and mixed mode propagation. While in the hot rolled steel (not cold drawn) the pearlitic microstructure is randomly oriented and the crack progresses in hydrogen by breaking the ferrite/cementite lamellae, in heavily drawn steels the pearlitic microstructure is fully oriented and the predominant mechanism of hydrogen assisted cracking is the delamination (or decohesion) at the ferrite/cementite interface.